Day 111 - Toxal and money

13:00
I battled to fall asleep with the phantom pain, but when I finally did, I slept for 11 hours.
One good thing about phantom pain, is that I concentrate on it and don't see the angiosarcoma elephant in the room.
 
I have been reading about Taxol. That is the main ingredient in Paclitaxel, the anti cancer drug I get in my chemo treatment.

Throughout history the Yew tree has been used for many purposes. The wood was used by English archers to make the long bow, and it was used to make barrels. It was also used as a poison, hence the name Taxol (Latin for Toxic). The Latin name for the Pacific Yew tree is "Taxus brevifolia".

In the 1960's, the bark was stripped off the Pacific Yew tree, and the poison taken out. Stripping the bark kills the tree. It took about 2000 mature trees to make 1kg of Paclitaxel. In 1990 they found that Taxol was also in the needles of the English Yew tree. It was in higher concentrations, and the tree was not killed harvesting the needles.

They have since been able to produce Taxol synthetically in the laboratory,
but it is still cheaper to use the needles from the English Yew tree. This is how the main supplier of Taxel, Bristol-Myers, does it. There was some controversy about patenting something that is found in nature. But then most of our drugs today are from plants. Aspirin, morphine, quinine, cocaine, and many many others. That is one reason to protect the environment.
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22:00
I just fell off my wheelchair. It gave me such a fright. I wasn't playing around at all. I was just moving forward near the big chair. One of the front caster wheels met the chair at an angle, and the rubber tire rode up the front of the chair on an incline, and tipped the chair backwards. I was lucky because as the front of the chair lifted, the front caster wheel got stuck under the chair cushion, and slowed the fall into slow motion.
I would never have believed such a thing could happen, but it did.

I fear that I will soon need to get some money from somewhere. I am in debt to my friend, and Maddie. I do not do "debt" very well.
I need a wheel chair, and I need plane tickets to George and back. I dread to think what the tickets to the US will cost early next year.
I need to get into the mode of spending all my wealth in the next few years, and not try to plan for living another 20 years. I think that 5 years is max, so I better start spending quick.
It is a very difficult thing for me. I am a cheap, frugal person. and spending money on a wheel chair when I have crutches is silly to me. But it would make my life MUCH easier.
Spending all my money in the next few years, then living another 20 years would be a soul destroying event. Having planed so careful all my life, then have everything turn out so wrong....I guess that is why they call events like angiosarcoma, "Black Swans".
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